15 Clichés To Avoid With a Ten-Foot Pole

Trite, hackneyed, tired — there are plenty of words to describe an overuse of clichés in your writing or speech. While they can be an easy way to express yourself, more often than not they're a crutch, a sign of linguistic laziness. Start digging deeper into your vocabulary and leave these 15 clichés behind.

What Is a Cliché and Why Is It So Bad?

A cliché is a phrase that has been beaten to death (that's a cliché). Because it’s been so overused, any significant meaning it may have had has been lost. Instead of adding color and interest to your writing, you often wind up sounding corny.

If you’re writing about how scrappy entrepreneurs are achieving success, that message was lost the minute you wrote “survival of the fittest.” Charles Darwin sounded original in his theory of evolution; you just sound clichéd.

How To Avoid Clichés

Words are powerful. But clichés are so overused they have lost authority. Unfortunately, clichés are so ubiquitous that you may not even realize when they sneak into your writing.

The best way to cut clichés out of your vocabulary is to proofread, proofread, and proofread again. Take a break and get away from your work before you take one last pass to remove clichés. Even better, ask someone to edit your work. An editor who isn’t too emotionally close to your prose can eliminate your clichés.

Removing clichés will tighten up your writing and make your work more specific and descriptive. Avoid flowery descriptions and instead strive to make your writing more accessible.

Pull out a thesaurus to find good alternatives. Instead of “in this day and age,” just say “today.” Avoid “pros and cons” and try a descriptor specific to your argument — maybe "assets and liabilities" or “costs and benefits” instead.

The hardest part about cutting clichés is they are so widely known they just fall off the tip of your tongue (cliché). If you spot any of these phrases in your writing, pull out your red pen (another cliché).

Writing on the wall

Whirlwind tour

Patience of Job

Never a dull moment

Sands of time

Paying the piper

March of history

Hook, line, and sinker

Long arm of the law

In the nick of time

Leave no stone unturned

Fall on deaf ears

Cool as a cucumber

Cry over spilled milk

Champing at the bit

Photo credit: Ananth Pai/ Unsplash

 

The Rule of Adjective Order

The rule of adjective order refers to the order in which adjectives are placed in a sentence. In other words, if you have more than one adjective describing a noun, this rule determines which adjective you should put first, second, third, etc.

As a note, some grammarians include “determiner” at the beginning of this list, but we’re excluding it because determiners are not really adjectives. Determiners are the articles or other limiters that start off the adjective list — things like a, an, the, our, my, etc.

1. Quantity or number — four, five, many, few

Quantity or number is as simple as it sounds. If there's an amount, it goes first. This is usually the easiest to identify.

2. Opinion — pretty, lovely, gross, boring, amazing, hard

Opinions are also called observations. They are adjectives that someone might consider biased. You may look at a painting and find it beautiful, but someone else might consider it ugly. A task that you find to be easy might be difficult for another.

3. Size — huge, small, mammoth, 5 feet tall, 36 inches wide

Size can be a judgment call, or it can also be a concrete, measurable descriptor. Whether or not it involves a number, size is tertiary in adjective order.

4. Shape — triangular, oblong, circular, straight

A shape adjective describes the physical configuration of something. It may refer to an actual shape or the general description of an object.

5. Age — five-year, 12-minute, young, antique, mature, modern, old

An age adjective tells you how old or young something or someone is. It can be a specific number or a general descriptor.

6. Color — purple, marigold, black, pale, sparkly

This one’s pretty obvious as well. It can be one of your standard ROYGBIV colors, or it can be a description of the quality of the color, such as "bright" or "translucent."

7. Origin — French, Italian, Martian, suburban

An origin adjective describes the source of something. Where did the noun come from? Generally this shows up as a proper noun, but it could be something like "rural" or "urban."

8. Material — gold, wooden, polyester, silk, plastic

Material refers to what the noun is physically made of. This can get a bit confusing if you're using a word like "gold," which could be a color or a material, or both.

9. Purpose — cooking, cleaning, hammering, sleeping

This is the last adjective in the order and is often considered part of the noun. It usually references what the item is used for and often ends in “-ing.” Think about a "roasting pan" or a "sleeping bag" or a "curling iron." This final adjective could also be a noun in an adjective form, such as a "coffee mug" or a "flower vase."